Potential Arsonist Changes (POLL)

[POTAN]

YES
Implement both changes

[DarkSaint07]

Sheriff should also see Arso and doused roles as Arsonists.

[retep119]

Change Arsonist

[Kikigiri]

These are both completely awful changes for the reasons I outlined previously (and which other people have gone over above.) Given that the first post was hijacked into a breathless "The arsonist needs SOME CHANGE, ANY CHANGE", I hope that BMG reads these results (which split pretty broadly) as a statement for that the Arsonist needs some sort of change but that nobody really agrees on what.

Either one of these changes would significantly reduce the amount of depth and strategy involved in facing an Arsonist. Taken together, they eliminate it entirely and turn the Arsonist into a totally-random, skill-free role that will sometimes win out of the blue and add nothing constructive to the meta. (While also, of course, randomly damaging the ability of the Investigator to do anything at all constructive.) I would very, very much prefer that the Arsonist be removed from the game entirely rather than either one of these changes, let alone both.

These suggestions are awful. We can come up with better. Please delete this poll and make a new one with "The arsonist needs some changes, but definitely not these" as an option, at the very least.

[orangeandblack5]

Except if both done partially and in limited amounts this should work just fine, and it can also help out the Sheriff. And if it doesn't work, there's always the ability to go back.

[playhavock]

Players no longer know when they are doused
Investigators see players who are doused as Arsonist, Bodyguard, Godfather (the doused player still knows they are doused)
Implement both changes

how can you not see when you are doused and also see when you are doused? Option 3 is a paradox!!

[MisaTange]

Players no longer know when they are doused
Investigators see players who are doused as Arsonist, Bodyguard, Godfather (the doused player still knows they are doused)
Implement both changes

how can you not see when you are doused and also see when you are doused? Option 3 is a paradox!!

In that option, the doused player still knows they are doused

[Aurjay]

I know the both changes implemented is the highest right now, BUT it's extremely overpowered with the Investigator's results change suggestion. That investigator's result change alone would make Arsonists wins jump to probably around 95% with almost no losses for them. You will have tons of people complaining afterwards and you will then have to change it again shortly after the change. Just not even wise to suggest that.

[Kikigiri]

Except if both done partially and in limited amounts this should work just fine, and it can also help out the Sheriff. And if it doesn't work, there's always the ability to go back.

The mayor's changes were a catastrophic failure that made the role nearly useless, yet there's no indication anyone wants to go back and try a different fix.

The problem is that there are some things that make people unduly frustrated. People found mayor games very frustrating, so they lashed out with a poorly-considered change, and don't want to go back on it even though it basically wrecked the role and failed to fix the underlying problem. Same here. People are frustrated by the low Arsonist win rates, so if this change is implemented, even though it will make the entire game much more random and much less strategic, there's not going to be any appetite to go back and try something else.

People get most angry about issues that they can immediately pin on one thing. "I hate losing as an Arsonist" is easy to pin on the Arsonist and easy to demand random, unhelpful changes like this for. "The game doesn't feel very deep or strategic anymore when an Arsonist comes up" isn't going to be as easily to pin down. There will be a general malaise and a general sense that the game is less fun as the changes sink in, but because it won't be as easily traceable to one thing, there won't be the kind of outcry necessary to roll it back.

This is why it's important to make changes with an eye towards the entire meta rather than just trying to fix one specific complaint. This change (even, yes, in "limited amounts") would make the entire game less fun in order to artificially bump up Arsonist win rates. It's an absolutely terrible way to accomplish that goal - from the perspective of everyone else in the game, the Arsonist is working fine; Towns often freak out about them, have to worry about them, lynch people looking for them and so on. None of the main gameplay mechanics related to the Arsonist are broken at all - they're working excellently, exactly the way they should, and the Arsonist has just the impact on the game that a NK should.

It has a low win rate, yes (although as I've said elsewhere, I feel that obsessing over win rates is a mistake.) But this change would break literally all its interactions with the game in order to "fix" that. That's dumb. We should search for a few more solutions before going for something as terrible as this.

I strongly urge BMG to not just look at the vote totals but the arguments and the vehemence behind some of the opposition to this. This wouldn't just be a slightly bad change; it would wreck the Arsonist's interactions with the game entirely. Most of the people supporting it, meanwhile, haven't really expressed any arguments in support of these specific changes, just a general gut-level frustration at how hard it is to win as an Arsonist.

That frustration is valid. This specific set of suggestions isn't. Silent douses and douses-as-framing are both utterly awful suggestions with no redeeming qualities, and no permutation of them would improve the Arsonist's gameplay at all. They would amount to completely removing (or drastically scaling back) nearly all of the main gameplay vectors the Arsonist currently interacts with others; keep in mind that the Arsonist is already the NK role with the least interaction with the rest of the game (already immune to Sheriffs, already bypasses doctors). Obviously NKs will win more if you remove the Town's ability to interact with them, but that doesn't make for a more fun or interesting game.

(Also, as an aside, remember that the Investigator (who is the main other role targeted in this) just got a major nerf when the role list was revised. That alone should be enough of a reason to put a hold on Investigator-nerfing suggestions for now.)

[Kikigiri]

All any is supposed to be chaotic

It's supposed to be playable, not totally random. This change would make the Arsonist essentially random in any game mode that doesn't have Ranked's ridiculously restrictive list - there isn't really any way to catch him beyond exploiting Ranked's lack of claimspace.

Hopefully, All Any will not be the only major mode you can use to escape that kind of Town-favored list in the long run. Solving games by process of elimination is a terrible way to go - it's at the root of most of the things people complain about in Ranked - and this change would make that the only way to catch an Arsonist. That is not the direction the game ought to be moving in. What the game needs is to change some of the Town in the Ranked list into Random Town - this would help all the non-Town roles (all of whom currently struggle to win), including the Arsonist. And since this change would be toxic in combination with that, it's obvious that this is a bad change.

BMG, please implement more Ranked role list options before making any major changes like this. Otherwise the game will end up in a state that breaks it under any role list but the current Ranked one, and it still won't fix the core problem. The current Ranked role list is overwhelmingly Town-favored and will always be overwhelmingly Town-favored; breaking roles like this in an effort to solve that won't help anything. Change the Ranked role list first, then we can talk about smaller tweaks with an eye towards how they work in a healthier environment.

A meta where the game is easily solvable once the Town knows a few roles is simply not salvageable. Fix the Ranked role list first, stop trying to change the underlying game rules just to prop it up.

[bERt0r]

The mayor's change was desperatly needed and resulted in a much better game experience.
The arson changes combined are a bad idea imho because it will make investigator useless. You find a Bg/arson/gf but in reality it is the jailor who was doused. He doesnt know he was doused himself so he thinks the invest is lying. This messes up the whole game.

[DarthaNyan]

1. Silent douses are an indirect nerf to arso: his targets will more likely die to mafia since they dont know who is doused and who is not.
2. Douse-framing sounds like a gimmick that doesn't address any of Arso's problems: doused targets dying (even more so with [1] in mind), getting RBed, transported resulting in lack of killing power, lack of claimspace.

And i also want to see "Arso desperately needs a change but not the ones proposed in this poll" option.

[Odysseus17]

I'm sorry, but I win FAR more with Arsonist than Serial Killer, both of which I win far more than Werewolf. When you play Serial Killer it becomes pretty obvious by Day 5 or 6 who you are, as there are only a few Townies left. However, the Arsonist keeps people alive right untill the end, and as there are so many people left you are way less likely to be singled out. Honestly I think Werewolf needs more of a buff than Arsonist.

Tldr; git gud

[DarthaNyan]

the Arsonist keeps people alive right untill the end, and as there are so many people left you are way less likely to be singled out.

that also means that those alive players perform their abilities and share more information with others.

[BlazinIce]

The mayor's change was desperatly needed and resulted in a much better game experience.
The arson changes combined are a bad idea imho because it will make investigator useless. You find a Bg/arson/gf but in reality it is the jailor who was doused. He doesnt know he was doused himself so he thinks the invest is lying. This messes up the whole game.

or the arsonist douses the jailor

[cinapta]

many people think the investiator buff is op, but here's a suggestion to help with that:
the doused person only shows up as bg/gf/arso for a day or two, because it only takes a couple showers to wash off the smell of gas.

[amagnificentvoid]

Players no longer know when they are doused
Investigators see players who are doused as Arsonist, Bodyguard, Godfather (the doused player still knows they are doused)
Implement both changes

how can you not see when you are doused and also see when you are doused? Option 3 is a paradox!!

In that option, the doused player still knows they are doused

Misafriend. <3 I think what this person means is, if you make everyone doused show as BG/GF/ARSO and there's an invest, the people who obviously aren't would know they are doused. Or that's how I interpret it.

[dbz]

many people think the investiator buff is op, but here's a suggestion to help with that:
the doused person only shows up as bg/gf/arso for a day or two, because it only takes a couple showers to wash off the smell of gas.

I like this suggestion if they do decide to go with the change.

[maezm]

Just throwing it out here, silent douses still hurt both mafia and arsonist. Mafia is more likely to kill doused people than before, and in quite a lot of current Arso games, evils tend to not claim doused if they are, so that the Arso would figure out that he doused a scum (in most cases), which was a good way of scumreading for Arsonists.

[BlazinIce]

With silent douses everybody thinks they're going to die soon, even if they haven't been doused.

[dbz]

The mayor's change was desperatly needed and resulted in a much better game experience.
The arson changes combined are a bad idea imho because it will make investigator useless. You find a Bg/arson/gf but in reality it is the jailor who was doused. He doesnt know he was doused himself so he thinks the invest is lying. This messes up the whole game.

This. If an invest says "this person here is possibly arson" and they go "no I'm jailor and your ass is going to die tonight" and then they kill them, it just causes chaos for the town. I really hate the 3rd option a lot.

[IPlay4Dayz22]

The mayor's change was desperatly needed and resulted in a much better game experience.
The arson changes combined are a bad idea imho because it will make investigator useless. You find a Bg/arson/gf but in reality it is the jailor who was doused. He doesnt know he was doused himself so he thinks the invest is lying. This messes up the whole game.

This. If an invest says "this person here is possibly arson" and they go "no I'm jailor and your ass is going to die tonight" and then they kill them, it just causes chaos for the town. I really hate the 3rd option a lot.

Yes, exactly. It causes waaay too much confusion, but at the same time, it is kinda needed to balance it out a bit. But yet again, I feel like this would cause too much confusion piled on top of the rest.

[dbz]

Yes, exactly. It causes waaay too much confusion, but at the same time, it is kinda needed to balance it out a bit. But yet again, I feel like this would cause too much confusion piled on top of the rest.

A little bit of confusion is fine. So I can understand the arso needing to be buffed a bit. But just imagine if tons of people started showing up as bg/arso/gf. So many mislynches because the odds of that person being arso or gf are enough to make the town want them to die.

[IPlay4Dayz22]

Yes, exactly. It causes waaay too much confusion, but at the same time, it is kinda needed to balance it out a bit. But yet again, I feel like this would cause too much confusion piled on top of the rest.

A little bit of confusion is fine. So I can understand the arso needing to be buffed a bit. But just imagine if tons of people started showing up as bg/arso/gf. So many mislynches because the odds of that person being arso or gf are enough to make the town want them to die.

Yes, confusion is necessary. It adds to the whole deception and lying part of the game, but the 3rd option can make Invests practically useless IF combined with the second option... Why you may ask, (and in this case I hope you don't because it's obvious) it's because you can claim DOUSED. Now some may say that the actual Arso can claim doused, but once the Arso ignites after claiming doused and he still stands, it's pretty fucking obvious who the Arso is. But mixed with the 2nd option, that person doesn't know he/she is doused, so that person does not know if the accuser is actually Inves and he/she is doused or possibly Mafia/NK trying to frame of some sort.

Overall I think he 2nd option is the best choice.

[Myersvandalay]

Yes, exactly. It causes waaay too much confusion, but at the same time, it is kinda needed to balance it out a bit. But yet again, I feel like this would cause too much confusion piled on top of the rest.

A little bit of confusion is fine. So I can understand the arso needing to be buffed a bit. But just imagine if tons of people started showing up as bg/arso/gf. So many mislynches because the odds of that person being arso or gf are enough to make the town want them to die.

I imagine the opposite really. If nobody's died to SK or WW by day 2, the town will assume there is an arsonist, at which point they will know pretty reasonably that a lot of people are doused, and more or less greatly distrust the BG/GF/Arso result.

Smart investigators will realize it, and when they find a BG/GF/Arso, they will write it down, and delay their charge on it until ignition. Once the ignition goes off, any surviving BG/GF/Arso's, are then confirmed to actually be one of those 3 roles (unless they were in jail on the night of ignition, in which case they can be anything BUT the only arsonist).